Behind the Scenes — New Hire's Roadmap and Build Tracking

Hi all! I wanted to start this behind-the-scenes series with a discussion of how I organize my game development timeline and work schedule for New Hire. I'll discuss how the game's scenes, builds, and entire development are constructed and why. A lot of time and work went into getting this part of the game to a good place, and I prioritized having this work figured out far in advance so that I could spend development time focused on making art and releasing the game.

Getting Started

Here's a screenshot of my typical workspace when I'm not making art or programming the game. I organize everything in Figma, a design application similar to Sketch or Adobe Illustrator. When I started putting this game together, I tried to start planning in project management software like Jira or Notion, but a lot of options I tried out didn't suit my particular needs. I needed an application tailored to an individual, not a company or group, something flexible that I could use for both visual diagramming and design/UI work, and something that could handle having a lot of files/objects in it that didn't cost a ton of money. Figma, which I also happened to know well already, fit the bill for these requirements.

So, knowing where I'd work, I put together all my notes and started actually making a roadmap for the story.

Roadmap

I started storyboarding the game with a roadmap — essentially, breaking down the entire game into scenes which flow into each other and lead to the major story points. In my roadmap, all of New Hire is broken down into these scenes, visualized as cards.

Each scene is a moment in the story that serves some purpose, involves some art assets (character art, background art, a script) and is part of a build (a set of scenes broken out to work on in my schedule). These cards have editable tags which I can toggle to be marked as complete, not complete, in progress, etc. I can also add new tags or delete tag categories from the card (if there are no new characters in this scene, that category is empty, delete).

When developing the storyboard for New Hire, I wanted to prioritize story, environment, characters, and subject matter over any questions of how to break up the work or how many assets were needed. Therefore, I didn’t categorize any scene into builds at first, I just made them and edited as I went. This really helped flesh the story out and establish continuity.

Only after finishing the major storyboard for the game, including major story progression and all romantic arcs, could I section these scenes into chunks of work (builds) which could be applied to a realistic and healthy schedule.

This image intentionally zoomed out — no spoilers! Well some spoilers.

With the roadmap complete, and all scenes organized into builds, I had to create a realistic work schedule based on these builds with a new page, which I call the Build Tracker.

Build Tracker

The Build Tracker is similar to the roadmap, but instead of organizing scenes, it organizes builds (and other content, like Behind-the-Scenes posts and chapters of Cade’s Corner). This system allows me to see all of the assets in a build, which of those assets are complete, and what I need to work on each month.

I set this system up so that there are two primary schedules — when content is posted and when content is created. The posting schedule is when stuff is posted to Patreon, the work schedule is when I actually work on it. The way this works is really useful, because it gives me a solid 1-3 month head-start on deadlines.

For example, here’s the posting schedule for September 22, the date the game launched:

Now, here’s the work schedule for September 22, which means everything in this column needs to be completed before the 22nd:

You can see that in the working schedule, I include more than what's posted so I can build that head-start on work. Obviously, this example is a bit of an exception, since the launch month was packed with stuff — I wanted a lot to be complete for the demo and for getting ahead!

So, given that, here's what the posting schedule looks like for the next few months:

And here's the work schedule:

As this development schedule continues, my goal is for this buffer to let me navigate new things (first YCH cameo auction, for example) and let me deal with any personal life issues that could delay development. As the schedule continues, the pace of the work schedule goes further and further past the posting schedule, which is the goal — and hopefully means a consistent output from me for all of you!